I’ve decided to embrace this role, and this blog will be my access point of my thoughts, adventures and advice. I’m available for discussion, as well as hire. So here’s to new adventures, and resetting of lots of things!

NPR Music is doing a great job to buck that trend.  Their site is top notch, and they feature many different styles of music in interviews, concerts, album reviews and even first listen streams before the albums are available.

Last week the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed a concert, nothing new.  What was new was that the concert was shown across the country live at movie theaters.  It’s just like what the Metropolitan Opera has been doing for a few years.

Radio stations are still around, and many of them are using their HD-2 and 3 channels and their web streams to push the boundaries of programming with new music and genres that would never make the air otherwise.  Of course working in public radio I have a tendency to lean towards those stations, but KCRW, The Current and WXPN are some of the leaders that I turn to for non-classical music when I’m looking for something different or new.

So just when you might be getting discouraged that there is nothing new out there in new music that’s decent or you are looking for a classic – it’s out there, you just have to find it.

Tonight I talked with a friend from college through Facebook.  She studied audio production at JMU with me.  Now she’s an system admin.  In fact, most of my classmates are in other fields (though some in related fields).

I’m happy where I’m at in my life.  My friends are happy where they are at.  All of this reminded me of the saying, “Life is what happens when your busy making plans.”  I didn’t plan on working in public broadcasting or teaching, but I really enjoy it.  I enjoy my family and my friends near and far.  I’m grateful that I still get to record, edit and mix music from time to time.  So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.  Sometimes life will let you steer, other times your locked in the trunk.  Either way the ride should be interesting!

Of course we teach that certain techniques work for some situations (like XY for radio) and other techniques work for others (Decca Tree for CD Recording).

Over the past nine years I have recorded classical music and other accoustic music.  At first I tried each of these techniques.  I would evaluate the effectiveness of each.  At the end of the day I’ve decided that I don’t like any of them and yet I like them all.

Yes, a stereo recording works.  However, combining these techniques provides so much clarity and realism that you just can’t get with just 2 microphones.  I love using 2 ORTF setup on the same stand for string quartets (1 faces forward and 1 to the back).  XY and pick ups for a duo.  It really depends on the hall and the makeup of the group.

I know that many people just set up a stereo pair and hit record.  However, if you take a little extra time you can really open up your recording and make the realism come alive.

I’ve noticed as I watch more and more hockey that some teams play better when they play good teams, and play worse when they play teams with bad records.  Well, the same thing happened this past Tuesday evening.  The York Symphony was just great.

I knew James Galway was good, I’ve heard plenty of this recordings, but listening to him live was something different.  I had a microphone just in front of him, so I had the best seat in the house.  His sounicquality is just amazing.  To think he has been his entire life, as he is about to turn 70, and he is still rock solid.  That said, it blew me away that he stopped one movement because he was flat, and had the orchestra start over.  Others might blame the orchestra or try to hide it.  James just stopped the orchestra, apologized to the audience while making a joke and started the 2nd movement over again.

I bring all this up because most concerts that I record don’t stick with me all week long, but this one did.  It’s these types of concerts that make we want to record symphonies more and more often.  Now if only I could get on a recording for a CD release, that would be truly interesting.

However, recently I have not been going to stores to look at music.  I listen to the radio and surf the web, but I haven’t been shopping and buying music.  My wallet was happy, but my ears were craving more.  I needed a fix of music.

After talking with my 22 year old sister I decided it was time to dive into iTunes.  I ran out to a local gas station and bought 2 $15 iTunes gift cards (why 2?  I couldn’t come home with one for myself and not have one for my wife! Jeesh. ) and sat myself behind my computer.  It was time to join the millions of people who have purchased music online.

4 hours later I hadn’t purchased a single song.  I had found great new music and songs I hadn’t heard in years, but I couldn’t make up my mind.  Quickly I made a move and in 5 minutes I only had $0.04 left on the gift card.  So, what did I buy?

I bought the Bob Marley album “Legend.”  I love Marley, and I owned this CD until it “disappeared” while at college.  My music library was feeling empty, and it needed to be returned.  Besides, I needed to introduce my daughter to Bob.

I also purchase:

- Kayne West’s new single, “Love Lockdown.”  It’s so simplistic in it’s groove, and yet every time we hear it both my wife and I are bouncing and singing along.  Always a good thing to have in a song.

- Evanescence’s “My Immortal,” because I love Amy’s voice.

- Israel Kamakawiwo’ole singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.”  If you do not know Iz you must go out now and listen to him.  Iz was a Hawaiian with the most amazing tenor voice ever.  This song is nothing more than him singing with a ukulele.  I believe it was in the movie “50 First Dates.”  I know it’s been in a few commercials.  I first heard it a few years back and I have been on a mission ever since to get it.

So, what does this list tell me (or you)?  Yes, even though many people say it, I do have every eclectic taste in music.  But, if you listen to all of this music you will find a constant running through it all – great songwriting.  There is nothing better than a well written piece of music. I don’t care if it’s Bach (I will be buying Gould’s performance of the Goldberg Variations soon) or the latest from Kanye West or Led Zeppelin or Hoots and Hellmouth.

I do think that is one of the better things to come out of music moving to the internet.  Now that we can all find a new group to listen to, so musicians have to stand out.  Some are still trying gimicks (Miley Cyrus) while others are just producing great music.

So thank you Apple which created  iTunes.  I’m sorry I’m a little late to the party, but thank you for giving music back to me.  I needed it.

It’s understandable.  As a student your job is to get the best grade possible so you can get the best job possible after you graduate.  For some students, meeting these requirements is so important that they forgot the artistry in telling a story.

I find that requirements when creating a news story helps to make it more creative.  By limiting the time I can use, I am forced to remove all but the very best audio.  Since time is limited, even if it is 9 minute story, I make it a point to record as much sound as possible (interivews, sound, etc) so I have as much as possible to work with.  However, you are not going to record 25 interviews for a 6 minute story, but you might talk to that many to get the background you need.

I am not a reporter, so I am not concerned about the reporting aspect, but I am a producer.  I am interested in the art of telling the story.  I try to tell a story as clearly as possible.  If that means 6 actualities, then I will get them in.  If it means 25 actualities then I’ll make it work.

One of the “techniques” I saw in some of the projects was filling for time.  This drives me up a wall.  On the radio it tells me they didn’t work hard enough to tell the story.  In the classroom it tells me they only did the minimum to get the grade.

I told the class that the requirements I listed for the project would only earn them an 80%.  In order to do better they must “impress me.”  I gave some examples (more interviews, multiple pieces of music.  In the real world we are forced to “impress” our audience every time, or they will turn us off.  Every thing that goes on air, from a promo to a show, must make the listener say, “Wow!”  In the real world our grade is a 100% or a 0%.

So what’s the point?  No matter what you are working on, from a class project to a international show, work to impress every time.  Good enough doesn’t pay the bills.

Image by andy z via Flickr

This evening I made my audio class sit there and do nothing but listen to the entire 1 hour broadcast of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds,” from 70 years ago today.  It was amazing to watch them.

Every day I work on audio for radio.  I sit in a studio and do nothing but focus my ears on audio – there are no distractions.  There’s no television, internet, blogs, twitter, cars driving by, co-workers needing things, family members asking for something, whatever.  Just sit there and focus on every little aspect of what the sound is like, and how to make it better.  I get to breathe, slow the world down to the point where I can worry about a sound that will pass by in a blink of an eye but without that fix I will pull a listener right out of the story.  I revel in these editing times.  The world melts away, and I dive into a different world.  When I walk out of the studio I reenter the world that everyone else lives in.  Right now I’m blogging, watching tv and talking with my wife.

I forget that most people never experience this, and probably couldn’t handle it.  That sure was the case today with my students.  There was no way they were going to be able to sit still and focus on one thing for 59 minutes.  They simply could not due it.  It made me worry about the future of audio production if these communication students could not give sound just 59 minutes of their lives.

Then the questions came.  They had heard little quirks, odd sounds, and wondered how an audience could suspend disbelief when they were told that a reporter made it from NYC to outside Neward in 5 minutes.  They had been listening!  They had picked it all up and were enveloped in it, but they are so used to being overloaded that focusing on a single thing is tough.  They’ll get it, those that are interested.  If these students, who are taking an audio class for communications not an audio degree, can get sucked in to this production, then the people who want to work with audio should get sucked into it even more.  There is hope!

They were asking questions like, “How would you make that sound?”  They even talked about producing thier own radio drama!  I might use this excitement and idea for their final project of the class.  I’ll have to work the idea out a little bit more.

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On October 30, 1938 at 8pm a radio drama aired on CBS that changed the world.  Orson Welles and his acting company – Mercury Theater – aired a dramatization of H.G. Wells “War of the Worlds.”  People were so caught off guard that they thought the drama was real, and Martians were attacking us, until the end when when Welles said thank you for listening.

For the past 70 years many historians, sociologists, broadcasters, students and writers have studied everything about that broadcast.  What I find interesting is the combination of everything, how it came together and the perfect execution that made it what it was.

Welles was a genius!  He knew that people would tune in after they were 8 minutes or so into the broadcast.  He had already said it was a drama, so most people missed it.  The script was spot on.  The acting and sound effects were second to none.  The true suspense was unreal.

If you haven’t heard the broadcast, find it.  Listen to it.  Realize that television and the web did not exist.  Realize that radio was a trusted medium and when people reported “breaking news” that it was serious. That voice from the radio was your connection to the world.  Yes there was the newspaper, but it was a history book, while your radio was immediate.  Then listen to it again.  It is truly amazing.

So anyway, my Mom and a friend of ours held a baby shower for us yesterday.  It was really nice to see all of our friends and family members who could make it, it meant a lot to us.

Next week is election day on Tuesday, November 4.  Now I don’t care who you vote for, just vote!  OK, I do care who you vote for, but it is more important that you vote then to make sure you are voting with me.  If you don’t vote you really have no room to bit#h.  So get out there and make a decision!

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Today I was teaching digital audio, how digitizing works and how it is different from analog.  I’ve written about Sample Rate and Bit Depth before.  While preparing for this class, reviewing my notes from when I was in school, and the text book we are working from and I came across a really good visualization to represent an analog audio wave, sample rate and bit depth.

Draw a graph, you remember the x axis horizontally and the y axis vertically.  Then draw a sign wave traveling left to right.  Now draw lines from the top to the bottom of the graph through the x axis.  The more you draw, the smaller you chop up the wave.  These are the samples, since the x axis represents time.

Now draw lines from the left to the right of the graph across the y axis The more of these lines you draw the smaller the lines up and down, these represent the bit depth.  The greater the bit depth the more dynamic range you can represent digitally.

OK, here is the really cool part.  All of those little boxes you have drawn represent a single bit.  You can now see the higher the sample rate (more lines left to right) and the higher the bit depth (lines left to right) you have more little boxes.  The more little boxes you have the smoother you can draw another sine wave using just those boxes.  Can’t see it yet, try coloring the little boxes in.

Pretty cool, huh?  Now maybe it works for me because I’ve been working with this for years.  However, the looks of, “oh, I get it” come across so many of the faces in my class tonight might mean it will work for you too.

We have had several events in the last couple of weeks where we didn’t just repackage something for another medium, but created something live.  We held a forum in our television studio where there was a panel, moderator and a studio audience.  To set up for the event we had to think of recording the event for a television show, but because of the studio audience it was also a live sound event.  It’s really hard to mix an event for an audience from another room!  The only way I could tell if it was too loud was to listen for feedback or rely on the camera guys to tell me if it was loud enough.  That’s a very uncomfortable position to be in when mixing audio!  I can hear feedback coming before most and can take action so no one in the hall knows.  It’s more then a little hard to do that if you are in a soundproof room!

As we merge our technologies and mediums it is becoming more important to have experience in all styles of audio.  Studio recording, broadcast, live, theater, etc.  I find myself needing to know all of these on a weekly basis now, and I think soon it will be on a daily basis.  Audio specialists are no more.